‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’: The Kinks song that “stood out immediately”
One of the greatest things to arise from the swinging sixties era, along with lava lamps, miniskirts, and James Bond movies, was an influx of young and inventive songwriters. Ushered in by the efforts of The Beatles, countless pop-obsessed youths tried their hand at songwriting, though few were quite as noteworthy as Ray Davies. Forming The Kinks in 1963, Davies quickly became a defining voice for Britain’s post-war youth, and his quality as a songwriter was evident from the very beginning.
An art school student during the early 1960s, Davies formed The Kinks with a strong artistic manifesto and an extensive range of influences owing to his lasting love of blues, jazz, and rock music. At the same time, the songwriter, along with the rest of the group, became entrenched in the blossoming mod subculture, defined by sharp Italian suits, amphetamines, and a deep-rooted love of jazz and R&B music.
Early triumphs by The Kinks firmly established the band’s defiant rock and roll sensibilities, pioneering the use of guitar distortion by slashing their amplifiers with razors, and creating masterfully short, sharp, and anthemic tracks like ‘You Really Got Me’. However, as the group progressed, Davies’s songwriting skills developed tenfold, often drawing upon a sense of social realism, reflecting his early life as a working-class kid in London, and incorporating a wide range of musical influences.
One of the earliest tracks to expand The Kinks’ sonic repertoire was the 1966 effort ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’, which drew from old-school music hall, in addition to their usual R&B-infused sound. While the song didn’t have the same rebellious energy as ‘You Really Got Me’ or ‘All Day and All of the Night’, it expertly encapsulated the fashion-conscious attitudes of the swinging sixties.
Largely inspired by the mod subculture, within which fashion was of key importance, the track satirises the fickle nature of London’s rapidly evolving fashion scene. Seemingly, Davies had been batting the idea for the song around in his head for some time before eventually scribbling it down on paper, allowing the seminal anthem to arrive fully-formed and ready to go.
Producer Shel Talmy, who was instrumental in the early successes of The Kinks, later recalled, “Ray Davies was one of the more prolific songwriters I have ever worked with. He could literally write a dozen songs overnight if he felt the mood.” Explaining their working process, the producer continued, “We used to get together about once a month or once every week or two and go through the stuff he had.”
“I would pick out the ones that I thought were real far along, and the ones that were not so far along, and the ones that would probably never be far along,” he continued. “’Dedicated Follower Of Fashion’ was one that stood out immediately.” Not only did the song stand out for its endearing satire of 1960s fashion, but also because it was so different from anything Davies had produced prior.
This inventive track would go on to earn The Kinks a top-five single in the UK, but its impact on the group was much larger than that. If you look at their later works, such as the groundbreaking concept album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, many of the ideas and sounds included on that record bear a resemblance to the style of ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’. That stand-out song affirmed the diversity of Davies’s skills, allowing the band to explore a vast range of musical influences in addition to their rebellious mod rock anthems.
